51 Conference update Events and courses

ursula arens Writer; nutrition & dietetics

Ursula has spent most of her career in industry as a company nutritionist for a food retailer and a pharmaceutical company. She was also a nutrition scientist at the british Nutrition Foundation for seven years. Ursula helps guide the NHD features agenda as well as contributing features and reviews.

internAtionAl CritiCAl dietetiCS ConferenCe: manchester, 14-16th August 2015

if you are not going to a sunny beach, or to lush hills this summer (= august), you could go somewhere that offers neither of these attractions (= manchester), but promises a chance to meet and mingle with progressive dietitians from around the world.

The international conference for dietitians in Manchester in August has the theme: ‘Doing Justice: shaping change through experience, science and imagination’. There will be debates to consider how to promote new understandings for advancing health equity, food justice and nutritional wellbeing using diverse means of knowledge creation. The themes of the conference involve a critical examination of the dietetic practice that is shaped by familiar norms, but also shaped by less explicit silences.

Critical Dietetics is a fairly new concept, but this event will be the fifth International Conference on this theme. Manchester follows other exciting venues of Chicago, Nova Scotia in Canada and Sydney. The venue will be the Manchester International Conference Centre and full details of the programme and registration are listed on: www.criticaldietetics.org. Star speakers will include Dr Clare Gerada, who was the first female Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, with a particular interest in female leadership, and Food Policy expert Dr Geoff Tansey.

The UK host organiser is dietitian Dr Lucy Aphramor, who is one of the founder members of the Critical Dietetics movement. She describes the trigger of her need to re-examine care concepts from thoughts she had during her first dietetics post. “As I sat in clinic in some of the most deprived areas of Coventry, using only the knowledge I brought from university, I had a growing sense that I was missing something important that linked people’s lived experience and their health.”

In 2004, Lucy won the Rose Simmonds Special Award, which funded her attendance at the 14th International Congress of Dietetics in Chicago. This allowed her to develop contacts with many fellow dietitians in the US and Canada, which led to the organisation of a seminar in Canada in 2009 entitled Beyond Nutritionism: Rescuing Dietetics through Critical Dialogue. It was at this event that a declaration was made to launch the concept of Critical Dietetics.

Critical Dietetics is interested in sparking conversations about novel ways of approaching the complex social, political and cultural issues encountered in the broad field of dietetics and nutrition practice, research and education. Some of the multiple perspectives that define the term ‘critical’ may lead to different, perhaps improved ways, to support nutrition aspects of public health, particularly in relation of social and environmental issues.

There is perhaps no full definition of the term Critical Dietetics, but some intentions are captured in the declaration agreed in June 2009. It aspires to capture the relationships between food and health as more than the nutrient contents of foods connecting to

physiological effects in the body. It is impossible to escape cultural values in discussions of diet and health, but Critical Dietetics attempts to make the assumptions upon which food and health choices are made more visible. Professional strengths come from openness to diversity and debate and themes at the conference will consider many of the social aspects that affect dietetics practice in a scholarly way. It is an opportunity to celebrate what dietitians have achieved and to discuss in what ways the profession could evolve.

Topics and themes to be addressed at the conference in Manchester include the following: • Doing justice to innovation in nutrition and dietetic education, practice, activism, research and practitioner development. • Student, practitioner and activists’ experiences of speaking and practicing from their own lives and/or disenfranchised positions, or feeling silenced. • Promoting diverse ways of knowing in dietetics and nutrition, including embodied knowledge. • What is the role of the medical humanities in nutrition and dietetics? • Can creativity be taught? • Arts-based or arts-informed inquiry as a means for challenging knowledge hierarchies and supporting knowledge co-creation. • Creativity, leadership and equity. • What conceptual frameworks support a reorientation of health to embrace social justice? • How can we simultaneously improve nutritional wellbeing and avoid healthism?

And there’s more! Five years ago, the first Dietitian as Artist exhibition was held as part of the Dietitians of Canada Annual Conference in Montreal, and Conference attendees are all invited to take part in the follow-on event Making: An Exhibition of Ourselves.

The Manchester conference is an exciting opportunity for more UK dietitians to discover the vibrant, supportive community of Critical Dietetics. Registration is now open at: www. criticaldietetics.org

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Issue 106 June 2015

PAEDIATRIC FOOD ALLERGY

ISSN 1756-9567 (Online) Juliana Scapin p13

KETOGENIC THERAPY FOR ADULTS WITH DRUG RESISTANT EPILEPSY. . . p28 Susan Wood Specialist Dietitian, Ketogenic therapies LIVER DISEASE OBESITY SURGERY HOME ENTERAL FEEDING PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

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